How’s the preparation for the show going? Going and doing panto, was that a deliberate choice to get back in front of a live audience with the tour coming up? No, no. It’s my third time doing it, and, to be honest, it always seems to be an option at Christmas to do it. Normally someone says do you want to do it. And I completely love doing it, it completely suits my act and the comedy I do. And also I like the lifestyle of it. It’s very social – a bit like summer camp, you’re all thrown together for eight weeks or whatever, and then suddenly it’s over, it’s very sad. Yes, it is. But that works both ways. The afternoon shows before Christmas they had a lot of schools in, and that’s a bit of a nightmare, actually, as you get one adult to about 25 kids. So all the jokes go over their heads, and you motor to the next bit of shouting out. That can be slightly soul destroying when you know that they’re staring at you, waiting for the next moment to scream at you! Evenings they get the jokes… Going back to the tour, when did you decide you wanted to go out again this year? How does the timeline work? So I sort of started writing it at the end of May last year, and I would write stuff, then every week I would go and try out what I’d written. Read it off postcards, put ticks and crosses next to them, mainly crosses. But I’d accumulate the tick stuff, and then I’d do a whole evening somewhere, doing two and a half hours reading it off. And then I’d put more crosses on, cross off maybe 80 jokes or something. Then I’d do the whole process over again. Supposedly what’s meant to happen is a gradual purifying process. That’s what’s meant to happen – on the tour, people might sit there and think this is the stuff you kept, yes?! Do you evolve the act much as the tour goes on then? Not a huge amount, no. What I end up probably doing is saying I don’t want to sing that song again, it’s awful. So I drop a song or something, and then think maybe I should put something else in there. I’m moving the order around all the time. Just to find that optimal order of when you’re doing a whole patch of one liners, and you feel the audience getting a little tired of the one liners at which point you find the right point to do a little song or go and get a prop. To keep the fire stoked. A show that relies on you remembering so many jokes, it would strike me as quite hard to change the order as you go along? Well, I don’t change the order of the gags. They’re kind of like the cement. It’s more to do with the items in-between. So I might change the order of whereabouts I put a song, or some item. But if I said I’m going to do these eight jokes in reverse order, I just couldn’t do it! Sometimes when I insert a new joke, it cocks up what I’ve remembered. If I add a joke about an ice cream shop that was then going to go into a joke about a funeral parlour and then I put a joke in-between about manhole covers, then suddenly I’ve got to find a way to get from manhole covers to a funeral parlour. You have to re-invent a different link. I think the writing is the hardest bit. Once you’re out on tour, it’s like most of the work is done then and I’m enjoying myself. But particularly with – and I don’t want to tempt fate and get booed off – touring, when it’s my name on the poster, the people who come tend to already like what I do. You walk on, and it’s like coming on to friends in a way. If I could click my fingers and have another hour ready, I’d go straight out again next year. It’s just that amount of work. I think I might have to slightly adjust my style slightly and do less one liners in the future, because it is a big job getting that sort of stuff together. Your feats of memory are impressive…! The way I remember it is that I start rehearsing it, rather than cramming it two weeks before, I start two months before. I start going through it once a day, two months before. And that’s the way it sticks. If I do it little and often. While I was doing panto, as long as I ran through it every day, I knew that by the end of the two months, it would be in there. As you do more and more tours, do you find it getting any easier in any way? You mentioned before that it’ll feel like you’re coming out to friends on this tour. Last time we talked, you said that you got the biggest kick coming out after a more conventional comedy act, and defying people’s expectations of what they’re going to get off the next act. That seemed to work really well on Live At The Apollo, for instance? I used to get the biggest kick from that, particularly when I was doing loads of circuit gigs. Because then you’re coming out to people who don’t know you, and so it is that you come as a bit of a bolt out of the blue. Are you filming the gig this time? Not any plans to. If someone was to say let’s do a DVD, then maybe we’d do it. The previous tour I did, Punslinger, wasn’t made into a DVD. No one wanted it. That’s the other thing that slightly demotivates me to write another hour, if no one wants these things on DVD. I don’t want Punslingers to disappear into the ether, because I thought it was quite a strong show. I think maybe if we do a DVD this Christmas, I’ll probably do the Joke-amotive, and hold Punslinger back as my White Album! I am tempted to do that. I didn’t know that was his route, but I am tempted. At the very least, something I’ve been meaning to do this week before I go out on tour, I’ve got no record of Punslinger. I’ve got it written down. Normally when I have these cue sheets for myself, it’s on a couple of pages of A4. And each word suggests a joke. As time goes on you forget what that means. I never recorded it anywhere, so I keep meaning to record me doing Punslinger into a microphone somewhere. On your last DVD, in the extras you showed you getting your dad on stage to tell a joke. Are you bringing any family members along this time to do the same? I have to ask about your Neighbours cameo, that your agent managed to get you. What’s it actually like stepping onto that set about 15 years after Kylie left? [Laughs] It was very, very surreal. It was a lovely sunny day, and you wander out and there’s Lassiters. The funny thing about it was that I didn’t know the characters. I haven’t watched it for so long, so I didn’t know there was a girl called Pip or Elle or something, and then there was a couple of blokes, one called Lucas. And it was one little scene, and obviously I had no idea what story was coming out of. I just sat outside Lassiters, and I was aware of trying to manoeuvre my head so that when the two of them were talking I was in the background and able to see the lens of the camera between their heads. I moved my head so it was definitely in shot, and then wandered over and asked them directions. Was Lassiters really the only name you recognised? That was the only name, yeah! They put me in this little trailer, and said we’ll come back for you in a minute. And I was just laughing, sat there on my own wondering what I am doing here! Yeah, yeah, exactly! It’s one of those sort of moments. It’s like when I did Not Going Out, Bobby Ball was in the Christmas special. And I used to be a massive fan of Cannon and Ball when I was younger, and this was the first time that I’d met him. I think when you meet people and see things that you remember from your childhood, they’re more special, you know? So Neighbours was a bit like that. I remember with Bobby Ball, the first time I met him at rehearsals, I walked up to him and put my hand out and said, “Bobby Ball.” And he shook my hand and said, “Tim Vine.”! And I thought this is great, he knows my name! It was great news about Not Going Out getting its reprieve… Presumably you’d given it up, and got a call out of the blue? There was a lot of stuff going backwards and forwards with Lee and the BBC and stuff. I think when the BBC had said they didn’t want it any more, the production company – Avalon – were on the case. Yeah! It was exhausting. I got up that morning and thought I’m going to break my back today. I was convinced that I was going to get injured. There were 20 of us out there, and of the 20, six were injured. I was really actually genuinely amazed. If someone had said to me beforehand that six people were going to be injured out of 20, I would have put my house on me being one of them! I think it’s rewarding, though. Sometimes when you do things that scare you, they’re the most rewarding. The best thing I did last year in terms of a day’s filming – which I think comes out this year – is a show called Scream If You Know The Answer. It was hosted by Duncan from Blue, and the whole thing was questions being asked on rollercoasters. It was just brilliant. A whole day at Thorpe Park, being paid to go on this ride and asked general knowledge questions! It’s funny you should say about Jim’ll Fix It… Tim’ll Fix It..? Have you got a big chair, some cigars and loads of jewellery? Yeah! [Laughs] Someone, somewhere would like Tim to fix it for me to drink a glass of orange juice! I’ll just squeeze in two more questions! Firstly, compared to doing Total Wipeout, how scary is it sitting in Dictionary Corner on Countdown? Finally, you talk about going out of your comfort zone. We talked previously about a little film you’d done called Library Altitude Zero, and you’d run some copies off but kept them in your loft. You’ve always seemed keen to do film work… … but I’ve never got round to it, I know. That was my little experiment. I have been a little bit busy with stuff. I started off last year writing a film idea, and then all this other stuff happened with the tour, and I went to Melbourne, so I didn’t have time for it. But I like this idea about a giant moth that attacks a small village, and I’m the manager of the light bulb shop! Well, after the tour I’m going out to Melbourne again, so I’ll be doing the Joke-amotive in Melbourne. So that’s pretty much almost immediately after the tour, five days at the most. Then I get back from there half-way through April, and then I don’t know what I’m doing til August, and I’m going to do the Joke-amotive in Edinburgh for the whole festival. April, May, June and July maybe I’ll do something again then – there’s a few possible bits and bobs! Tim Vine, thank you very much!